Friday, March 05, 2004
Steve Forbes, here to preach to the converted
Steve Forbes is over from the States to address the Act Party conference. His editorial in the Herald takes the emotive nonsense (and No Right Turn's brand of trite simplicity "rob from the poor to give to the rich") out of the equation and makes a simple economic argument about tax rates.
Just this morning when she was talking to Holmes, Helen sucked on her lemon and spat out one of her favourite lines of "tax cuts for the rich". If they bothered to listen they may find that tax cuts, for anyone, are not the evil that the left would claim.
Steve Forbes in the Herald, "There is another positive impact of Kennedy-Reagan type of tax cuts - the rich pay more. When Ronald Reagan became president, the top 1 per cent of income-earners in America paid 19 per cent of the federal income tax. Now, the top 1 per cent pay more than 35 per cent of the income taxes.
Last [northern] spring, President George W. Bush cut capital gains taxes (from 20 per cent to 15 per cent) and the dividend tax (from 38 per cent to 15 per cent). Personal income tax rates also declined.
Since those reductions, the American economy has picked up steam with real annual growth rates exceeding 4 per cent."
Lower rates result in high income earners paying more, shizzer, maybe Helen will have a listen!
